What it is

DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing.
It was designed to run on any processors knowing Intel x86
has been the first CPU to be supported.
Ports for other CPUs like IBM Power 8 are under progress.
It runs mostly in Linux userland.
A FreeBSD port is now available for a subset of DPDK features.

Main libraries

Usage

receive and send packets within the minimum number of CPU cycles (usually less than 80 cycles)

develop fast packet capture algorithms (tcpdump-like)

run third-party fast path stacks

For example, some packet processing functions have been benchmarked up to 160 Mfps (million frames per second, using 64-byte packets) with a PCIe Gen-2 NIC.

What it's not

DPDK is not a networking stack and does not provide functions such as Layer-3 forwarding, IPsec, firewalling, etc. Within the tree, however, various application examples are included to help developing such features.